Explained: What awaits Prashant Kishor in Bihar?
Prashant Kishor sure knows how to stay in the news. Days after his ambitions of becoming a “stakeholder” in the crisis-ridden Congress party came to a naught, the I-PAC founder has once again set the political grapevine abuzz with his Twitter announcement of going to the “real masters, the people, to understand the issues better and the path to Jan Suraaj – peoples’ good governance”.
Though Kishor hasn’t shared exact details of his next steps, he has made it known that his immediate port of call would be his home state of Bihar.
Sources close to the strategist told The Federal that Kishor’s ghar waapsi to Bihar is the “logical next step” in his plans to grow out of the mould of a mere backroom boy for sundry political outfits and nurse a plank of his own.
Ever since he helped Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress return to power in Bengal last May, Kishor has maintained that he no longer wants to carry on as a political strategist.
Indian Political Action Committee (I-PAC), the organisation founded by Kishor to draw up election strategies for his clients, has continued to pitch for contracts – most recently in Telangana where it has tied up with chief minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao’s Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS). Kishor, however, has asserted that he no longer runs the day-to-day affairs of I-PAC.
Also read: Don’t blame Prashant Kishor for Congress’ slipshod set-up
In fact, I-PAC’s continuing business with various political parties, irrespective of their ideologies and electoral priorities, was one of the key stumbling blocks in Kishor’s attempts at joining the Congress. The party wanted I-PAC to cease its activities with other political outfits if Kishor had to come on board, while the poll strategist maintained that he and his organisation should be seen as separate entities.
Kishor’s declaration of returning to Bihar to continue his quest for being a “meaningful participant in democracy” comes at a key turning point in his decade-long career of ideologically promiscuous dealings that have seen him work with anyone who can afford his services – from the rabidly Hindu right-wing BJP to the Dravidian DMK and other so-called secular outfits such as the AAP, TRS, TMC and the Congress.
This March saw Kishor’s much-publicised abilities as someone who could guarantee unlikely electoral victories to his clients being blown to bits.
After an earlier round of talks with the Congress failed last year, Kishor had led Mamata Banerjee to believe that her Trinamool Congress could realistically displace the Congress as the BJP’s principal challenger in Goa when the state went to polls in February. Kishor’s hard-sell was so convincing that Banerjee had begun to dream of a Trinamool government in the coastal state where the party practically had no grassroots presence till a few months before the assembly polls.
While Kishor did manage to deliver some Congress stalwarts in the state to the Trinamool’s kitty, the surprise victory he promised remained elusive – strengthening the argument that Kishor may have the chops of amplifying the victory for a party that is best poised to win an election but can’t deliver when his client is up against a formidable challenge.
Kishor’s failure in Goa coincided with his failed attempts at wooing NCP supremo Sharad Pawar into launching a united Opposition front sans the Congress party. Pawar, lived up to his reputation of being among India’s most wily politicians, as he entertained Kishor for several rounds of talks only to publicly rebuff the possibility of an Opposition front without the Congress capable of defeating the BJP.
As such, by the time Kishor returned to the table for talks with the Congress, his aura of a formidable curator of electoral victories and shrewd political manoeuvring had diminished. The Congress, despite Priyanka Gandhi Vadra’s feisty push for giving Kishor a chance, too rebuffed the strategist’s advances. The party’s Old Guard cautioned interim party president Sonia Gandhi that the I-PAC founder’s pitch for Congress revival was only a smokescreen and his actual goal was to use the internal problems of the party as a pivot to launch himself on India’s political stage.
Also read: The reasons why Congress-Prashant Kishor hobnobbing fell apart
Sources close to Kishor say Bihar, despite its crowded political space that already has several formidable players such as Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United), the BJP, Lalu and Tejashwi Yadav’s RJD, the Congress and many other smaller caste-based parties, is still the “best bet” for the strategist to re-launch his political ambitions.
As a poll strategist, Kishor has experience working in Bihar. He had largely been credited with scripting the massive victory of the RJD-JDU-Congress mahagathbandhan against the BJP in 2015 – the first major electoral blow to the saffron party since Narendra Modi rallied his party to power at the Centre a year earlier.
While the mahagathbandhan fell within two years of its victory, Kishor had milked it to make his political debut as vice president of the ruling JD (U). His innings with Kumar’s party, however, didn’t last long and after a long-drawn acrimonious war of words, Kishor was expelled from the party, forcing him to return to his earlier avatar of a poll strategist.
Bihar’s political landscape, says an I-PAC member, has changed since Kishor’s last political outing. “The equations between Nitish and the BJP have worsened progressively as has the alliance between the RJD and the Congress. Ram Vilas Paswan’s death has also led to a split in the Lok Janshakti Party and the future of its two factions (one led by Paswan’s son, Chirag Paswan, other by Paswan’s brother, Pashupati Nath Paras) looks bleak. The remaining smaller outfits are fence-sitters, influential in limited pockets and open to alliances with whoever is best placed to form a government. It is also clear that none of these parties, be it JDU, the BJP or the RJD, can form a government on its own. So there is space for a new party that can fill the current vacuum. Kishor’s equations with Nitish are also on the mend and so even we don’t know what exactly he has in mind for the long haul but things are going to be very interesting,” the I-PAC member said.
Sources said Kishor would start his Bihar innings with what he knows best – feedback and data-crunching at the grassroots level. Helping him in the endeavour would be I-PAC, despite Kishor’s loud proclamations of dissociating with the outfit. “We don’t know whether he is launching a political party or something else. As of now, it seems to be an exploration of possibilities. Our teams will carry out various surveys to identify peoples’ issues, the space for a political alternative, where legacy parties are losing public’s confidence, expectations of the people, etc.,” said another I-PAC member who had previously worked with Kishor during the mahagathbandhan experiment.
Kishor will also have to be mindful of a possible realignment between the RJD and JDU. The Bihar CM has recently made a public display of his newfound affection for the RJD, particularly Tejashwi, after their bitter fallout in the aftermath of Kumar’s surprise move to walk out of the grand alliance and retain his executive position with the BJP’s help.
Sources in the RJD told The Federal that neither Lalu nor Tejashwi are enamoured by Kishor and have previously rebuffed his expressions of interest in working with the party. Kishor, said a senior RJD leader, had also tried to poach RJD leaders, including a close confidant of both Lalu and Tejashwi, on different occasions and tried to lure them to various parties that he was associated with at various points in time over the past few years. News of Kishor’s failed attempts had further widened the trust deficit between him and the Lalu clan.
Also Read: Prashant Kishor’s 5-point strategy to revive Congress fortunes
While Kishor’s equations with Kumar, Lalu and Tejashwi, or the top bosses of the Congress and also the BJP, may have seen its fair share of crests and troughs, sources say he continues to enjoy a personal rapport with several lawmakers further down in the hierarchy of these parties in Bihar. To what extent he tries to leverage these equations in his quest for a new identity may also determine what Kishor may finally end up doing in Bihar.
For now, Kishor has ensured that his failed bid to re-launch himself as a Congress neta is quickly relegated to the shadows and conversations around him are transfixed not on the few failures of his recent past but on his future moves.
